Online Dating Insider delivers cutting-edge insight and commentary on all aspects of the online dating industry. Topics include industry news, site reviews, emerging trends, analysis of dating site features, discussion about safety safety, finance and other issues important to the online dating market. Don't miss our Startups directory, useful to anyone running dating or social networking sites. Subscribe to the RSS feed (you can subscribe via email as well). Your comments and suggestions for stories are welcomed.
We offer consulting services to dating sites and social networks as well.
Last year Friendster was on the block for a cool $200 million. Shortly after, an astute lottery winner could pick it up for around $20 million. Recently, Viacom performed due diligence on Friendster and came back with an offer for $5 million. Friendster has raised about $15 million from VC over the past few years.
Friendster’s eight million monthly visitors, 20 million profiles and an ad-supported revenue model are outweighed by yearly operating costs in the $5 million range which continue to scare away potential suitors. PaidContent has more.
A friend worked on the original sixdegrees.com website (precursor to Friendster circa 1997) and I remember asking what people did on the site, only to hear the big deal was that you could email people you didn’t even know were in your network. Big whoop.
MySpace decimated Friendster because they got the music angle and were hip to the kool kids from the get-go. A larger problem was that Friendster never had a concrete identity. In the dating space, I know that women on FastCupid are far more likely to be my type than on Yahoo or American Singles. I’m able to make a purchasing decision based on my experience on visiting many sites as someone in the industry.
What are dating sites doing to woo people that are coming to online dating for the first time? Often times I will ask people to tell me what kind of people drive Mercedes and Kia’s. Most say something about the quality of Mercedes and the affordability of a Kia.
When I ask them what type of people go on different dating sites, the only thing I ever hear is, “I’ve heard of Match” and far less, “I hear Eharmony is for Christians.” That’s the sum total of branding in the online dating space. I assume that Adult Friendfinder would be mentioned as well, but who’s going to tell a complete stranger they know about that site?
It’s been a while since I’ve visited the home pages of the top ten dating sites. I’m willing to be nothing has changed in a year or so. Most will have stock photos on the home page of happy couples and weak or no branding phrase. Pretty much exact same features and pitch on each.
A cup of coffee later, here’s what I found on the home pages of the top 10 dating sites from Hitwise.
1) Yahoo has a happy couple photo, and a permutation of a tag line I used at ProfileDoctor 3 years ago, “Better first dates, more second dates.” Home page looks like a person who learned HTML last week designed it.
2) Match touts iteself as the largest and seems to have wrestled Dr. Phil from PerfectMatch. Someone in the search marketing group must have gotten promoted, because the top of the page is devoid of any branding and the bottom is hundreds of SEO-friends words and phrases.
3) Eharmony doesn’t have a tag line on the home page. It touts a Free personality profile and has the usual happy couple photo.
4) Gay.com has no tag line, just sexy pix.
5) True.com says Live Love Learn and has the couple photo and another of a couple who are about to, or just have, completed a intimate act.
6) American Singles has great-looking people, “Where people Connect.”
7) SinglesNet has a hot babe and the tag line “Dating made easy.”
8) Plenty Of Fish’s home page is a design atrocity, although Markus says that’s going to be fixed soon. The pitch is “we are free.”
9) Mate1 has a hot babe who’s all about intimate dating and free for women.
10) MSN Match has no tag line, but does have a happy couple photo.
Interestingly enough, several sites list their patents on the home page. So consumer research showed that people are more likely to shell out cash if they see a patent number on the home page?
Overall, I was underwhelmed by what I saw. Poorly designed, lame stock photos and weak tag lines.
As a guy, cleavage may get me to a site, but it takes a lot more to keep me there. Where is the excitement and the mystery we associate with meeting people for the first time?
Each of these sites should market themselves different from the others, although this is clearly not the case. I’ll be talking about this more in the coming weeks.
[tags: branding]
{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }
Concerning branding, Dave, what about niche sites like ChristianCafe.com? Christian singles visit us (obviously), as many have already heard about us from friends or within the faith community. We are well differentiated (again, inherently so), with a well designed, aesthetically pleasing concept (a virtual cafe). New features and constant improvement by listening to our members is critical. Seemingly small things like prompt customer service and solving any issues in a timely manner (like, within 24 hours) go a long way to keeping customers happy.
Hence, our strength, and a major reason we are so prominent in this market. Being around for 7 years doesn’t hurt, either, as we have had time to build our reputation over the years.
Judging by the continued new traffic and conversion to paid status, our market continues to agree. The recent Christmas/New Year’s season was the best we have ever had. January is also shaping up to be the best ever, too. May it long continue!
Needless to say, when your market is taken care of, they return the favour. This fleeting concept called profit (that’s P-R-O-F-I-T, not revenue, Marcus;-) is in short supply with most of the bigger dating sites out there. It seems like I have to bang my head against the wall to get this across to people. Size doesn’t matter - profit does! Sites like Yahoo Personals, Match, & eHarmony get this; sites like True & AmericanSingles don’t. Neither does Friendster, hence a major reason it’s valuation is plummeting.
http://www.actforlove.org
We’re not one of the biggest (yet), so if you’ve not heard of us, we are a dating site specifically geared towards progressive activists.
Our tagline?
“Take Action, Get Action!”
So hey, we’re certainly *trying* on the branding front! :)
I tried a few of those dating sites but find that most of the women on there just play games..
Maybe they’re married. And yes the hot girls are ringers..Go figure.
With so many dating sites on the Internet, we didn’t take the decision to go into this market lightly so we looked to solve problems in the industry.
The first we problem we looked at is honesty in the profiles and quality of the content within in them.
We filed for patent protection on our method of keeping people honest in their profile, partnered with Trufina for ID verification and criminal background checks. (Would be glad to discuss our reasoning for background checks)..
We just opened the site to beta testers and I would enjoy comments and feedback.
Your site, HonestyFirst.com, looks nice and you clearly have put a lot of effort into it. But, how are you going to market it? How are you going to get the critical mass needed to interest singles in trying you out - and paying you? How are you going to compete in an already saturated market (esp. a non-niche one)?
True.com is blowing its brains out trying - and losing money down a huge sink-hole. Herb Vest has the money to lose (currently), but they have yet to make it work, 2 years out. Most other sites (old and new) are in the same boat (not making money).
How can any new site compete against CPA’s of $5.00+? The singles market clicks to sites based on what is put in front of them.
How can YOU get HonestyFirst.com in front of them - and afford to do so?
You are quite right. There has been woefully little of interest from the whole
“datingsphere”, in the midst of what I would describe as nothing less than revolutionary
change elsewhere. I’m talking about blogging, of course.
I wrote an article for AVN back in May, where (along with some predictions),
I lamented the unnecessary importation of the “classified ad” model from print
newspapers in the beginning
of online dating, instead of a model that in my opinion would have been
more gratifying. Dating sites went with the familiar, which was fine for a while.
But a ceiling has been reached.
Once again, we’re at a crossroads. Those who would provide online meeting and
interaction services to the world must decide whether they will base their sites
on models that honor the past or whether they will dare to suggest new possibilities.
As I wrote on Richard Edelman’s Blog…
In the blog, the e-ndividual reaches a zenith of expressive power
and effect. Hundreds of thousands of new blogs come online
everyday. Yes, many of them are spam. But many of them are just people. They
are coming online to participate, to “have effect” and to make money by using
the newly-amplified power of their voice and their “vote“.
Anyone in the DatingSphere who isn’t preparing for Sea Change is just beachcombing
before the Tsunami. The collision of Dating and Blogging is going to be Cataclysmic
in the full, geological sense of the word. I, for one, am busy building a surfboard
the likes of which the world has never seen, atop a thousand-story tower about
100 miles in from shore — :)
Jack Mardack
president
profitLABINC.com
Critical mass is a problem at just about any dating site start-up. While our site dose serve somewhat of a niche, œusers that are tired of the fake profiles and games on the other sites, we have a broader appeal than most niche sites. We have strategic plans for getting the members, which I won’t cover on an open forum. The one thing I can say is that I never expected it to be an easy task and its something I’ve put a lot of thought into
The good news for us is that I’ve kept our cost structure so low that it won’t require 10’s of 1000 of customers to be cash flow positive. Like any other startup I think that hard work, determination, agility and good planning are the key.
When it comes to comparing us to True.com the only common aspect is that we decided to find a partner that will do ID verification and Criminal background checks. True still has the common industry problems of to many fake profiles… People using someone else’s photo, lying about height, weight, number of kids … on and on..
Our USP (Unique Selling Point) is driven by the process we call “Real Profile tm�. We have developed a method that empowers user to keep each other honest in their profiles. More info at: http://honestyfirst.com/index.php?page=marketing (patent Provisional Application number 60/766313 ). Using this process we empower our users to keep each other honest in their profiles.
If you feel like talking about this more, contact me and I’ll be more than happy to share more details. We can start by you sending me all your non-Christian signup attempts :)
Good Luck and thanks for the questions..
I agree with the points on dating-site branding. This has been addressed in my attempt at creating a fun meeting and dating system - http://www.pickmequick.com
Thank you.
Robert